In the remote control, physical computing and Internet of Things ecosystem, it’s frequently convenient to command something to move using an on-screen slider. In my case I’d like to control a pair of servos from my Linux notebook for an Internet-enabled prototype I’m working on. Sometime in the future I’ll port the sliders over to a little app on my Galaxy S3. This article covers how to hack together a rudimentary notebook user interface connected to an Arduino microcontroller using… continue…

Look for more staff cuts at IBM – especially in hardware – after the company’s quarterly earnings fell below analysts’ estimates. Big Blue reported fourth-quarter revenue of $27.7 billion, while Wall Street had expected the number to be more like $28.25 billion. Though revenues were slightly off at the technology services and business services groups, IBM’s hardware business dropped 3.5 percentage points to 35.6 percent, continuing the decline of the unit. Now word’s come that the company’s worked a deal… continue…

For Christmas, my daughter gave me a couple of Digispark boards. These little, relatively Arduino-compatible, ATtiny85 micro-controller, USB-equipped wonders are programmed from a notebook and will be the basis for a couple of my new projects. I also received word that my Spark Core has shipped. It’s a Wi-Fi-on-a-chip bolted to the back of a tiny Arduino. These two offerings were dreamed up and built by a re-born genre of developer who harkens back to the early days of solid-state… continue…